I wanted to create this blog as a place where I can store and retrieve information for future reference. I chose the name Humble Uker Ramblings because I have started out strumming my father's 1950's painted Harmony ukulele. I think that the greatest appeal of the ukulele as "the people's instrument" is it's humble simplicity. My contact email is HumbleUker@gmail.com. I have also been working on a blog for the Baritone Ukulele called Humble Baritonics.

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Monday, January 4, 2010

KEEP YOUR HEAD || You have more time if you're unplugged!

The news is talking about more and more gizmo's, Apple this, application that, kindle, new kindle, ipods [and Google phones]. Everybody has a cool new app. Are we as the human race quickening our short time on this earth by filling our heads with TV, radio, ipod soundwaves bouncing around in our brain cells filling space and filling time. My wife suggests that time has been accelerating.

Consider how time feels as you watch an action adventure slice 'em & shoot 'em and kung fu 'em up movie. Some movies are also sliced up and chopped and coming from so many directions that it's hard to get a grip of the situation, the director wants to keep us guessing. (The Bourne Identity #2 comes to mind.)

Now think about how time passes as you are hiking up a steep long hill, or as you sit still with closed eyes trying to count as many exhales without being distracted by any other thought. Try it for 15 minutes and each time you forget, just gently guide yourself into counting exhales again. Those 15 minutes feel like an hour.

I haven't been bicycling that much lately. I have a bicycle-built-for-two that I want running well for sunny weekends so that Wendy and I can spend more time in the slow lane. But the whole technology stealing our time concept and ipods (or video games) in general as an indespensible part of many hours of our day. Seems to me, the aspiring but still humbled uker, to take away our inner molodies, the songs that stick in our heads. (Ukulelezo has a word and a song for this term: ________ [Todd get the Prize!]. Ah heck, I'm not even going to google her now.)

I remember in 1979, riding a loaner Italian Bianchi road bike, from Boden, Sweden to Råneå, Sweden and halfway through the journey I lost a cotter pin and ended up with one pedal. The midsummer rain was pouring down. I would walk, sing, and pedal with one toe-clipped pedal whenever I had a down slope. I may have been out in the rain, just truckin' along for an hour or two. Those were real hours, thoughts of being in another part of the world where I had generations of family, truly enjoying my misfortune since it was my fortune. The songs I sang were from my memories and were sung off key and loud -- only the rain heard.